Religion in Ancient Egypt

Welcome to the History of the World Podcast. My name is Chris Hasler. And you're listening to Volume 2, The Ancient World. This is Episode 18, Ancient Egypt, Religion. Throughout our series of Ancient Egyptian episodes, we have continuously stumbled across a strong spiritual undercurrent to the whole 2000 year experience. We constantly talk about deities and deification. We see ridiculous amounts of effort being put into the spiritual building work. We see great efforts to preserve the bodies of the pharaohs who are laid to rest within these structures and temples. What was going on in these extremely pious societies? And where do we even start? What we ought to do is look back at what we do know and what we have already discovered. Traditionally, the story of Ancient Egypt starts at the formation of Egypt in around 3100 BCE by the first pharaoh, either named Menes or Nama. The Nama Pallet, which is the siltstone shield discovered at Hierakonpolis, depicts a pharaoh smiting a subject. Overlooking the smite is a falcon and we know that the head of a falcon was used when depicting the tutelary deity of Hierakonpolis. Let's think about this for a moment. Tutelary deities are the deities within the pantheon of deities that are responsible for the protection of the particular city. So a man with a falcon's head represented the tutelary deity and therefore the god who would protect the city of Hierakonpolis. The deity is called Horus and we mentioned him way back in episode 12. The fact that we have a man with an animal's head is typical in Egyptian depictions of its deities. It is also interesting because this kind of thing provides a link back to the subject matter of volume 1, episode 13 on Paleolithic art and ritual where we discovered that European humans had been depicting characters with animals' heads for many, many thousands of years. This is a kind of anthropomorphism where we see a combination of human and animal characteristics. We also suspected that this might be related to a prehistoric spiritual shamanism where the anthropomorphic figure represented a shaman who would be trusted to influence fortune by indirect means such as human ritual. So could the spiritual practices of our prehistoric ancestors be directly linked to the spiritual practices of the ancient Egyptians? Well, there definitely is a link but we may never actually know how tenuous it is. However, it is extremely interesting to see this common link. Horus and the Pantheon So let's try and find out more about Hierakonpolis' tutelary deity, Horus and how he is linked to the entire spiritual spectrum of ancient Egypt. We have not really discussed Egyptian cartouches and how they are a large part of our understanding of the chronology of Egypt. A cartouche is an emblem which represents a pharaoh as an individual. With the very pictorial writing system of the Egyptians it would be easy to construct a simple emblem that could be drawn or carved into anything relative to that pharaoh. So when archaeologists discover a cartouche on an artefact they can attribute the artefact to a particular pharaoh and a particular time period. When we uncover Egyptian king lists they are often represented by a series of cartouches drawn in sequence. The hieroglyphs can now be translated thanks to discoveries like the Rosetta Stone and subsequently we can have a reasonably solid chronology of ancient Egyptian pharaohs at our disposal. The earliest form of cartouche or royal pharaonic crest is called a serac and the seracs that we have discovered often have a falcon depicted at the top. Each serac would represent an individual pharaoh and would contain a different name than the traditional one of the pharaoh. We call this the pharaoh's serac name but due to the fact that the falcon was by and large the animal depicted at the top of the serac traditionally we have called this the pharaoh's horus name. This really shows how important and underpinning the horus deity was to the royal Egyptian culture. Now I do need to warn you that we find the same kind of trends among the Egyptian pantheon of deities as we did our Canaanite view. We find ambiguities that disrupt our desire to find a one-size-fits-all story for the Egyptian pantheon so we must try to stick with the stories that we have been able to interpret with the mixture of information that we have discovered. The fact that we are aware that Horus is the tutelary deity of Hierakonpolis could explain how Horus became a national deity as the origins of Egyptian unification could have originated from Hierakonpolis with the pharaoh Menes or Nama. Horus is the sky deity and the eye of Horus is often seen as a symbol common with ancient Egypt. The pharaoh of Egypt has been described as a personification of Horus on earth. After the pharaoh dies he becomes associated with the god of the afterlife and the mythological father of Horus, namely Osiris. However, in other texts, Osiris is described as a sibling of Horus leading Egyptologists to create a Horus the Elder and a Horus the Younger. Now we're not going to discuss all of this but we will look briefly at the rest of the pantheon. Where Horus is represented as a man with the head of a falcon his father, Osiris, is represented by a man with green skin. His mother is Isis, who according to mythology resurrected Osiris and protected their son, Horus. If you recall, when Ramesses II took his army to Kadesh to fight in the Battle of Kadesh his army were comprised of four divisions, all named after Egyptian deities. They were called Amun, Ra, Set and Ptah. Ra would also have the head of a falcon, much like Horus but was often displayed in fusion with Amun and called Amun-Ra. Amun himself is associated with an Egyptian cosmogony myth that is a mythology about the creation of the universe which included Nu as the deification of the watery abyss. This could be linked to the cosmogony of the Mesopotamians who believed that all life came from the underground aquifer called the Abzu something we explored back in episode 1. Ptah is described as the god of craftsmen and architects We have also mentioned other Egyptian deities within our podcast series whether they be directly or through association and we can often find their names within the names of the pharaohs themselves. Examples of other deities that we have mentioned are Aten, Imhotep and Min but there are dozens and dozens more. Seti I's name was undoubtedly originated from the deity called Set yet another of Ramesses II's army divisions. Set has an unusual place in the mythology as a bit of a bad guy. He is the god of chaos, natural disasters and violence even closely associated to the invading Hyksos people of the 2nd millennium BCE. It would make sense for such a god to exist in a polytheistic belief system that may have descended from basic animism the belief that all things have a spiritual essence. Set is supposed to have killed Osiris who was his own brother. Osiris's wife Isis resurrected Osiris and conceived Horus who took revenge on Set. The story of Set is not completely unlike the story of the Canaanite god called Mat who if you remember from episode 10 killed Bol before he was resurrected to take his revenge. Could this be an indicator that all of the fertile crescent mythologies and cosmogenies are in some way linked and could emanate from a common source? We don't know the answer to this but what we do know is that Set was depicted with the head of an animal that is open to fierce debate as to actually what it really is. The animal has a long downward curving nose and there are two rectangular ears which stretch upwards. We can also see that in its full body form on Egyptian reliefs and hieroglyphs with a body of something that looks like a slim dog. Egyptologists have resigned to calling this thing the Set animal due to the fact that they cannot agree on what it actually represents from the natural world. We will be taking a closer look at hieroglyphs later on in the podcast series when we discuss the emergence of writing but it is interesting to consider how many animal images appear in hieroglyphs. We have been lucky to have found thousands upon thousands of clay tablets that have given us so much information before the Egyptians started moving towards papyrus production on a larger scale and it makes sense that papyri would not stand the test of time quite like clay tablets do. So even the very valuable hieroglyphic inscriptions tend to give us more questions and answers about Set. Clearly unfavoured as a deity of the foreign invading Hyksos, clearly favoured as the namesake of Seti, celebrated as a defender of Ra in early times and demonised as the slaughterer of Osiris in later times. Constructions The Egyptian deities were often represented by anthropomorphic figures sharing human and animal features. One of the most famous of all Egyptian anthropomorphic figures has to be the Great Sphinx of Giza. The huge limestone statue of the mythical lion with the head of a human. The location of the Sphinx at Giza is susceptible to sandstorms and as such the Sphinx has been known to be buried by sand. Certainly during the 19th century there were great efforts made to clear the sand away from the partially buried construction. This wasn't the first time however. Remember that Egypt was not a unified nation throughout the ancient era. It rose and fell on a number of occasions. So the Thutmosid pharaohs, those of the 18th dynasty, must have been fascinated by the partially buried construction that was built by an ancestral society from which many amazing stories arrived to them down the generations in between. One of which was Thutmose IV who reigned at the turn of the 14th century BCE. So the period of the New Kingdom after the Battle of Megiddo and before the Amarna period. Thutmose would depict on a steel that he erected that he was instructed by the Sphinx to restore it to its original condition. Egyptian construction was remarkable to say the very least. Making sense of it has been a goal of humankind in modern times. The Sphinx was built at the most iconic pyramid complex in Egypt at Giza. The most popular line of thought is that the pyramids were built as tombs for the pharaohs. The sheer effort put into tomb building throughout the entire history of ancient Egypt is absolutely considerable and part of the reason why so many pharaohs have such vivid stories compared to other nations of this time. Right from the mastabas and pyramids of the Old Kingdom through to the temples and tomb complexes of the New Kingdom. Why did the Egyptians make such efforts? Well it may go back to the mythical story of Osiris being killed by Set. Osiris would be immortalised as the god of the afterlife and the pharaohs would aspire to become Osiris in the afterlife. It is said that once a pharaoh's soul reached the afterworld that they would have to sit before a jury of twelve gods. The gods would weigh the misdeeds of the pharaoh against a feather and if the two weighed the same then the pharaoh would be entitled to eternal life. In order to reach the afterworld the life force of the deceased pharaoh would initially need to return to the corpse. It was vital that the corpse was preserved to some degree so that the life force would recognise the body. This is where mummification comes in. Mummification Mummification was something that the Egyptians are very well known for. Certainly we can see that the Egyptians gained more knowledge about successful mummification as techniques changed as the centuries rolled by. The sand graves of pre-dynastic Egypt could act as a very good way of preserving the body and this may have been discovered by accident. But equally could have led to some spiritual interpretations about whether people were selectively preserved by a higher power. Early mummification attempts in mastaba tombs were not very good compared to later attempts. The Egyptians learned the art and eventually it would become a process that could take well over two months if and when done properly. Firstly an opening would be created on one side of the body where the vital organs and intestines could be removed and preserved in canopic jars. The heart would be left inside the body. The heart was believed to be the source of human intelligence so therefore the brain was considered to be useless. The brain would be removed as well as possible via the nostrils of the deceased, partly by the use of a metal hook and partly through a method of liquefying. Part of the reason why pre-dynastic grave burials may have preserved the body so well was the presence of natron salt which the Egyptians had established the value of. Natron has excellent fluid absorption properties and was used to absorb the fluids of the body and organs after the initial operations. The English word natron derives from the Latin word natrium which itself is derived from the Egyptian name for the salt and it is also why the chemical symbol for sodium is Na. The body would then be treated with oils before being stuffed with material to keep the body shape correct and then wrapped in many layers of linen before being placed in a decorated mummy case. Trinkets such as amulets would be placed alongside the body including scarab beetle amulets. The scarab beetle was regarded as sacred and its nature of rolling balls across the desert sands represented the disappearance and emergence of the sun each day with the beetle being the guiding spirit. The god of the sun's movement was Kepri and Kepri's head was represented by a scarab beetle. Obelisks Another long-running Egyptian tradition that has not been mentioned yet is the obelisk. The obelisk is another wonder of Egyptian technology that provides us with ever more unanswered questions. An obelisk is a tall thin monolithic monument which could be described as something pointing towards the sky especially in the Egyptian versions which had a pointed top thanks to something called a pyramidion at the top which is a small shape resembling a pyramid. Not a lot is known about the spiritual purpose of the obelisks which some have speculated is related to the sun god Ra due to the fact that they may resemble a ray of light. We have seen other old cultures such as the Assyrians of Iraq and the Aksumites of Ethiopia build similar structures which could be described as a type of steel like a victory steel common with many ancient cultures. However the Egyptian obelisks are very distinct and rather than having a facing side like other cultures' obelisks are much more symmetrical and four-sided. Often temple entrances like those found at Karnak could be flanked by two obelisks. These obelisks proved to be too attractive to certain cultures who visited Egypt through history. The Romans were awestruck by them and proceeded to remove many of them and take them back to Rome even to the point of destroying old temple walls to get at them. The fascination with obelisks has never gone away and we can track the fascination right up to the modern times with the strong desire of the United States to acquire one in the same way as the United Kingdom and France did by strong diplomatic negotiations with the Khedivet of Egypt in the 1870s the result being the erection of Cleopatra's needle in Central Park, New York City. Every time an obelisk was removed and erected it was a feat of engineering even with modern technology. The sheer mass of the stone obelisks cannot be understated so this presents another question with Egyptologists still debating to this very day. How on earth did ancient Egyptians erect these things in the first place let alone how they moved the whole thing from the quarry in the first place? So not only do we have a strong connection with the anthropomorphic animals representing spiritual beings that link ancient Egypt to Upper Palaeolithic societies but we also have a strong link between the spiritualisation of objects in the sky that connects ancient Egypt to megalithic cultures such as those who constructed Gobekli Tepe. From an anthropological perspective there definitely appears to be a strong need for the human species to attach a meaning to everything. What forces control the animal kingdom and how can there be so many different animals with so many different purposes? Where do we go when we die and what preparations can we make during our lifetime to protect ourselves from our mysterious fate? What influences are behind the objects in the sky and why does they give way to night and where does the sun go at night? Why are the stars arranged in the way that they are and what is the sequence or the code behind it and can we discover it? It seems like all humans everywhere were asking the same questions and it seems like all humans believed that their fates were in the hands of gods and that by pleasing their gods that they could influence their own fortunes. The Bremnerind papyrus is from the much later Ptolemaic period of Egyptian history but it does contain information about the deities of ancient Egypt that were obviously still very important to the population of Egypt long after this period. It contains information about ritual and ceremony that anyone can undertake in order to help the sun god Ra defeat his enemy, the great serpent called Apophis who would attack Ra at night when the Ra's vehicle, the sun itself, was making its daily journey through the underworld. Egyptians were encouraged to perform rituals to ensure that Ra could defeat the Apophis and begin to travel through the sky again at dawn. However, we do know that the traditional stories of Egyptian deities can be a little ambiguous as we have mentioned before. Why was Set worshipped by the 19th dynasty when he is believed to have killed Osiris and become the bitter enemy of his son Horus? He would even be pictured at the front of the aforementioned vehicle that ferried Ra across the daytime sky. It would definitely depend where you were in Egypt and during which time period that would determine the story that you would hear about Set. The stars of the night sky were deities known as the imperishable ones, always visible at any time of year. The Egyptians definitely distinguished the planets from the stars and regarded these as stars that know no rest and the planets would represent vehicles of deities in a similar way to the sun being a vehicle for the sun god Ra. Mars would be associated with Horus and Mercury was associated with Set. The Pharaonic name Amenhotep means Amen is pleased. Pharaohs would often carry the name of deities within their own name. Amen in Amenhotep, Ra in Ramesses, Set in Seti, Ptah in Maneptah and Thoth in Thutmose just to name a few. Another deity which represented an aspect of the sun was called Aten. Aten was not represented by a human figure or an animal but instead was represented simply by a sun disk and the sun disk would always be pictured with rays radiating downwards. It would be Amenhotep IV of the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom who would demand that this deity be worshipped exclusively. Amenhotep would need to change his name to suit the new style of worship and thus was subsequently called Akhenaten. We made mention of this during episode 15. He was wholeheartedly supported by his great wife Nefertiti who is perhaps more famous for the discovery of a limestone bust of her head discovered through excavations at Amarna in the year 1912. Such was Nefertiti's own devotion to this new monotheistic direction of the Egyptian royal family that it has even been speculated that after Akhenaten's death she ruled as pharaoh in her own right as Nefer Neferuraten. Now when we see the word Nefer in a name which is quite common in ancient Egypt it translates to mean the beautiful one. So Nefer Neferuraten probably means the most beautiful of all the beautiful ones, Aten. This is a very strong nominal praise of Aten indeed. Atenism was not readily accepted by the Egyptians. Egypt was generally regarded as a nation without much in the way of forced culture on its diverse range of people so it is believed that most Egyptians were somewhat free to carry out worship according to their own preference. Akhenaten appeared to want to force Atenism on the Egyptians but excavations from Amarna in particular, Akhenaten's new capital city demonstrated that people were just not ready to throw away centuries of tradition and belief with many artefacts displaying other traditional deities and certainly after Akhenaten's death it does appear that the Egyptian population were more than happy to go back to what they regarded as normal. The monotheistic worship of Aten was restricted to the elite class surrounding the pharaoh himself and it may have been that they feared for their own futures if they didn't obey their ruler. It seems that the general public were never really interested in adopting it. After Ancient Egypt After the New Kingdom, Egypt never really experienced the same kind of independent prosperity of the ancient Egyptian kingdoms again. Egypt came under the influence of foreign politics more and more even with many instances of rulers from foreign empires declaring themselves as the pharaoh of the country. The religious beliefs of the population remained somewhat intact with no radical overhauling throughout the first millennium BCE. In fact, it does appear that the Greek period of Egyptian history saw the Greeks themselves adopt and associate Egyptian beliefs and deities with their own beliefs and deities. This is not a particularly unusual Greek trait as it appears that the Greeks of the late first millennium BCE often tried to associate their spiritual beliefs with those of other cultures. This would only really serve to validate the belief system of the Egyptians. The wife of Osiris and the mother of Horus, called Isis, was worshipped by the Greeks as well as the Egyptians during this period. Osiris would become Serapis during this Hellenistic period so this just seems like a somewhat natural evolution of the Egyptian belief system. This would have also had influence on the Roman belief system as much of their ideas of worship and deities would be inherited from the Greek ideas which would contain Egyptian influence. Serapis himself would exist as a Roman deity and as the consort of Isis. It would not be until the iconoclastic attitude of the Roman Christians who imposed Christianity on the Egyptian population that we really see much of the Egyptian belief system become antiquated. It would not be until Europeans began to stumble across the wonder of the hidden treasures of ancient Egypt in the 19th century that the ancient Egyptian belief system was reawakened and became a fascinating insight into an opulent time long gone, full of unbelievable construction and a seemingly never-ending source of historical wonder. And that concludes our episode on ancient Egyptian religion. Thank you ever so much for listening to this week's episode. Next week on the History of the World podcast we're going to be exploring the decline of the New Kingdom and the aftermath of the New Kingdom. So we're going to be covering an area where we've already discussed before which is the Late Bronze Age Collapse which is contemporary to all of this. Now this particular subject has excited a lot of attention on the History of the World podcast forums and social media. The YouTube channel The Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages has posted a video version of the History of the World podcast Late Bronze Age Collapse episode which was episode 6 and there's already been almost 200 comments on it and well over 35,000 views and over 700 reactions to it. A lot of debate and a lot of different viewpoints have been expressed regarding the Late Bronze Age Collapse. I think it is probably one of the most contestable subjects that we've covered and I tell you what, I can't even begin to tell you how much interaction I've had this week regarding this very subject. Now we've had a gentleman called Chas Coleman who's worked in the archaeological field who's contacted me this week and he's expressed some great opinions about the Late Bronze Age Collapse and he's gone to great lengths to explain to me his point of view about it and it prompted me, I remember we had a gentleman called Keegan who similarly had a lot to get off his chest regarding his opinions about the Neanderthal extinction last year and as such what I did, I started off a discussion forum and perhaps looking back now it's a little bit too early in the podcast's lifetime to actually start something like that, there wasn't any interest in it really but this time I've started it again and we've already got people signing up to the discussion forum and I really want this place to be somewhere where we can discuss any topic that we want to so I'm posting topics on there. One of the other ones I've put on there is the one that was inspired by Joel McKinnon who argued that Thutmose III should have had the first profile episode rather than Ramesses II so I've actually put an opinion question on there that I'm hoping people will interact with saying who they think is better, Thutmose III or Ramesses II so it'll be interesting, if you go to the forum you'll be able to read the kind of responses that we're getting to that and there's some very scholarly type of responses to it and I want to invite people on there to ask questions and it doesn't matter how silly the question is if you've got a question about history that you want to see discussed by people of knowledge or you actually want to discuss something that you already know yourself that you maybe think the History of the World podcast hasn't covered or has dismissed or overlooked in its reporting of any historical events then this is a great place to come and do it so I encourage you to come and debate the topics on offer at the History of the World podcast forum the best way to find it is to go to the historyoftheworldpodcast.com website and go to the interact section so the website's had a slight revamp, we've reorganised things and now there's an interact section and you can go directly to the discussion forum there and join in the debate, we'd love to see you and we really want to hear from you now Mr Chas Coleman has recommended a book for me I believe it's a fiction book and it's called Hell to Pay and it's by Andrik Robson so Hell to Pay by Andrik Robson you can get it on Kindle and I'll post the link on the social media pages for it so it's just been recommended to me to be honest with you I'm not in a position to review it I haven't had time to devote to reading this but I'm happy to plug the book and if anyone does have the opportunity to read it and wants to review it on the History of the World podcast forum by all means please do I can even give you advice as to where to go to review it so no problem there talking of plugging things I didn't hear back from Joel McKinnon I'm not sure if he listened to the entire episode last week or maybe he got sidetracked I was going to post his version of the third song that he created many many years ago I was going to put it on the social media page but I was looking for his permission so if he's listening to this if he gives me a little nod I'm going to put the third live version from way back in 1991 on the social media pages for everyone to enjoy going back to the late Bronze Age collapse I stumbled across a YouTube video that had been created by a gentleman called Charles Snart who goes under the pseudonym The Histocrat and what I will do I will post the link to that video on the Facebook page I'm really really impressed by it I think it's an excellent video and it looks like he's put a lot of hard work into it not just the study of the information but also the actual visual video itself it's extremely well done an extremely good thing that he's done there I'm not sure if he's got any background in video production or anything like that but it's a very very good effort and I think in the interest of supporting those amateurs who are looking to promote their abilities and enthusiasm with history if you do get the opportunity to see this video then by all means give him a little thumbs up and a positive comment on his YouTube page and I think it's worth us supporting each other in terms of promoting each other's work I think it's an absolutely essential thing that we're doing and it does highlight and bring to the four good pieces of work that deserve attention another very good email I got was from a gentleman called Aaron he's put Hi, I've been enjoying the podcast and have a few things other listeners may want to know plus a question first, there's a free VR title called Nefertari Journey to Eternity this is a very detailed photorealistic scan of Nefertari's tomb and is seriously the most realistic VR experience I've had I could totally see someone with a lot of patience and a book on hieroglyphs going through and reading everything written on the walls there is also a narrator who will tell you about the specific figures and why they have been depicted in the tomb and this is available on Steam and the Oculus Store it's basically a free trip to an ancient tomb in a very good condition so it's highly recommended I've actually looked at a preview video or someone's actually demonstrated the tour on YouTube and filmed it and I will post the link it does look incredible and anyone with any interest in ancient Egypt should probably check it out next, one of my favourite books has yet to be mentioned A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson this covers the Big Bang as well as humanity but as a consequence doesn't go into as much detail on recorded history since it has such a broad scope it's true, Bill Bryson's publication A Short History of Nearly Everything I've not read it myself but I know that it was one of the most popular books and one of the most popular non-fiction books of the 2000s so it's a strong recommendation probably very well made finally, my question is if going forward new discoveries are made will there be new episodes added to previous volumes? will the episodes be re-recorded? will there be a new unscripted episode? or will something else happen? it's an excellent question and something that I was absolutely aware of when I first started creating the podcast that information, especially on the prehistoric the paleo-anthropological subject is ever-changing we're finding new species of humans we're finding new evidence of things and as such, a lot of the information will become dated or obsolete within the first volume and I'm totally aware of that however, most publications will gradually become out of date anyway having said that yes, it may be possible that new episodes need to be added it just depends on the seriousness of the alteration or the update of information it might just mean that another paragraph needs to be slotted into a particular podcast but I don't think it will be ignored what I want to do I want to wait for this information to emerge and be digested by the experts so that I can then present it in a sensible fashion rather than just knee-jerk and just stick a paragraph in saying, oh look, we've found the solution to everything only to find out that I'm wrong so yes, we will keep an eye on developments as they happen I'm sure the history of the world podcast community will always point me in the right direction as we're all quite excited by the same things, obviously and yes, updates may well happen re-recordings, updated episodes new episodes, they could be slotted in we might well have a volume 1 episode 25 at some point it just depends whether it's required I think, sensibly required so a little bit of common sense we'll use there excellent point, so thanks for the question P.S. I'm an Android user I'm not aware of a way to rate podcasts on BeyondPod I didn't even know we were on BeyondPod to be honest but I did want you to know that I stumbled across your podcast from the YouTube video yeah, brilliant thanks for letting me know where you've been coming from thanks for letting me know where you listen I don't know BeyondPod I've never heard of it and like I say, it's great to know that the podcast has found its way onto that forum I'm not sure how you rate podcasts but certainly anyone who listens to the podcast should look to rate and review the podcast because that's the way that we get it more into the public eye and obviously we want to attract more funding to the podcast we need to cover the costs of the podcast it's ever-growing and obviously the wolves are at the door looking for their pound of flesh from me so I need to be able to cover the costs so anyone that can make a donation please do so at the Patreon site you can find it on the History of the World podcast webpages and if you're not in a position to make a donation then please at the very least rate and review the podcast and get it up the charts on the relevant websites so that we can get more exposure just wrapping up some loose ends then on Twitter we had WVU Soldier who contacted us and said History of the World podcast hey I just heard your podcast via the Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages on YouTube I've now subscribed to your podcast directly and look forward to hearing more from you fantastic news thank you very much for that message thank you again to Ryan Stitt at the History of Ancient Greece podcast for the promotion of last week's episode he never lets me down Ryan thank you very much indeed we've got a poll running on social media at the moment because more than one person has criticised the use of the chapter intros so like the voice of God that you hear in the middle of the podcast frequently to sort of introduce new subjects it's come under a bit of criticism ever since I started doing it from the very beginning the reason why I started doing it really was to add some kind of it's like a take a breath kind of thing and it's a bit of a stop off point where you can sort of come back to the episode later on and re-pick it up again but it's not popular with everyone so I've instigated polls on Facebook and Twitter they only run for a couple more days but I just need to see what kind of reaction we get if you have a preference whether you like the chapter intros if you don't like the chapter intros get involved with the polls let me know and then I can maybe work with the response from the History of the World podcast listeners well I'm going to wrap up there it seems we do more and more talking at the end of each episode and that's not really why I'm here but it's nice to give people the mentions that they deserve and encourage you to get involved in the interactive side of the podcast so if you want more History of the World podcast there is more available you can just go to the historyoftheworldpodcast.com website and interact with the various things that we're creating on there trying to create a community of people that are interacting with each other and discussing history with enthusiasm and vigour and that's really what we want this podcast that's the goal of the podcast is to create a historian community and we're getting there we're doing some good stuff so it's good to see anyway that's all for this week next week it's the Ancient Egypt the end of the New Kingdom and moving into the Third Intermediate Period and beyond the Late Period etc and I'll look forward to speaking with you again this time next week have a great week everybody The History of the World podcast is available on many different podcast platforms so please don't forget to rate and review us wherever you find us visit our website at historyoftheworldpodcast.com and email us at historyoftheworldpodcast at mail.com Support the podcast at Patreon by clicking the support the podcast link at our website and join us on social media at Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr